Saturday, January 12, 2008

The year after the tribe won 111 games

OK, so I'm watching Back to the Future for the 4,543,221st time, and every time I find some anachronistic error, or something that doesn't make sense. The viewing of any time travel movie always brings up questions.

For instance, if Doc ended up opening the letter saying that the Libyans were coming, and he had the wherewithall to suit up with a bullet proof vest, wouldn't it just make sense to not show up at the mall that night - avoiding the Libyans and arming yourself.

But that's not what this is about. This is not about time travel questions, but about the state of the world in 1955.

Ok, so the whole plot of the film relies upon channeling 1.21 gigawatts of electricity into the time machine. Unfortunately, the only ways to do this are either a nuclear reaction or a bolt of lightning. Doc's admission that the nuclear option is impossible due to the lack of ability to secure plutonium, which he assumes is easy in 1985.

So they obviously construct a harebrained scheme to harness the bolt of lightning which lasts a fraction of a second and relies on all sorts of things going right, which almost kills Doc (which would set off all sorts of problems in the space time continuum)

But wait, was plutonium readily available in 1985? Doc lied and cheated his way to the plutonium, but it still wasn't every day activity. Here's all I'm saying:

Lets say the lightning bolt scheme doesn't work. I don't think that all is lost. I mean, I'm not saying they need to con the Soviets, or steal it from Area 51, but I mean - it was the era of nuclear warfare. Is it not feasable that an appeal to the US government could yield a success.

I mean, they take the time machine to the feds, they tell them the story, eventually, after they all accuse them of being nutjobs, Marty uses the same methods he's already used (knowledge of the future, the picture of his family, artifacts brought back) to convince SOMEONE that this is real, and that he needs plutonium, and if the government wants to monitor everything, that's fine - but can they still have it.

I don't think that this is a crazy idea. The plutonium in 1985 was just as hard to secure in 1955 and they got it.